You won’t see how to turn the Galaxy S22’s punch hole into a notification light in your normal settings app. To add this nifty feature, you need to download an app from the Google Play Store, but after you do that and go through the setup, you’ll have a nifty feature that Samsung never thought to add.
A few years ago, it was common to find notification LEDs on Android phones that would blink, pulse, and blink different colors to make sure you knew you needed to check something. With the move to full-screen designs, there’s no room in the bezels for these handy lights. That’s why you need to download an app like aodNotifythat turns the outline of your punched camera into a virtual LED indicator.
aodNotify works on the Galaxy S22 and other Samsung phones that are several years old. It lights up around your punched-out camera when you get a notification, and there’s an impressive amount of customization you can do to make it behave in different ways when notifications from certain apps come in, or when you plug in the phone to charge. .
So without further ado, let’s take a look at how to turn the Galaxy S22 punch hole into a notification light step by step.
How to turn the Galaxy S22 punch hole into a notification light
The first step is to download aodNotify from the Google Play Store.
You can also download this app for other Android phone brands so you don’t feel left out if you decide to buy a Google Pixel 6 or OnePlus 9. In this guide, however, we focus on experiencing the Samsung Galaxy S22. I tried this app on a Galaxy S22 Plus, but the experience should be the same for the stock Galaxy S22 and the Galaxy S22 Ultra.
To set up the aodNotify app after downloading it, there are quite a few processes to go through for the app to work. Fortunately, the app acts as its own comprehensive guide, but follow our steps and images to make sure you’re doing things correctly.
First, you need to select which apps you want to get the lightening treatment. You can choose any mix you like, or just select the “All” option.
Then grant the app notification access by flipping the switch to the blue On position. You will need to approve this again, as this is a high-level permission that you can give to an app. However, it is safe to do so as the app does not send any kind of data from your phone.
Now you can choose whether you want the always-on screen to be really always on or only on when a notification pops up. You can choose the always-on option as long as you have it enabled in your settings too, but if you’ve enabled it selectively, you’ll need to install another app, AOD Manager.
The last step requires you to go to the Ease of Access menu and then to Installed Apps, where you have the app draw over your other apps and screens. This option also requires confirmation as it gives the app a lot of power over your phone’s functionality. Once this is done, you can get started using and customizing the app.
For example, you can turn on screen edge lighting instead of the circle around the camera, with separate settings for when the phone’s screen is on or off.
You can change the animation, color, thickness and absolute position of the light. For example, I noticed that moving the circle by two pixels meant it encircled the camera more evenly on my Galaxy S22 Plus.
Keep in mind that many of the options are locked behind a £3.59 / $4.99 paywall. However, the free version is still worth downloading as there are enough tweaks to make it useful.
If you want to keep getting the most out of your Android phone, why not learn how to move Android apps to SD card? We also have a guide to checking Android battery health.
If you consider yourself a power user, you may want to know how to install Android 13 to pair the latest upcoming features. Or if you want to do something else cool with your S22, check out our guide on how to activate hidden selfie features on Samsung Galaxy smartphones.
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